Future performance rates of PCIe based Flash Memory drives is going through the roof based on the torrid pace of development at SandForce. They make the leading flash memory controller for SSDs and PCIe based SSD drives. And the rate of change in each generation of shipping product is scaling up much faster than anyone is ready for. Sustained reads and writes for single SSDs using SF-2000 controllers is quoted at around 500MB/s. As one person noted on a forum recently Flash Memory at this rate is getting close the PC-133 DRAM speeds (and I still have a Apple Titanium Laptop that uses PC-133). Truly the hard drive has been eclipsed, hello Solid State Disk.

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Image via CrunchBase

The next wave of high end consumer SSDs will begin shipping this month, and I believe Corsair may be the first out the gate. Micron will follow shortly with its C400 and then we’ll likely see a third generation offering from Intel before eventually getting final hardware based on SandForce’s SF-2000 controllers in May.

This just in from Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, via Anandtech. SandForce SF-2000 scheduled to drop in May of this year. Get ready as you will see a huge upsurge in releases of new SSD products attempting to best one another in the sustained Read/Write category. And I’m not talking just SSDs but PCIe based cards with SSD RAIDs embedded on them communicating through a 2 Lane 8X PCI Express interface. I’m going to take a wild guess and say you will see products fitting this description easily hitting 700 to 900 MB/s sustained Read and Write. Prices will be on the top end of the scale as even the current shipping products all fall in to the $1200 to $1500 range. Expect the top end to be LSI based products for $15,000 or third party OEM manufacturers who might be willing to sell a fully configured 1TByte card for maybe ~$2,000. After the SF-2000 is released, I don’t know how long it will take for designers to prototype and release to manufacturing any new designs incorporating this top of the line SSD flash memory controller. It’s possible as the top end continues to increase in performance current shipping product might start to fall in price to clear out the older, lower performance designs.